2023 was, for me, a tale of two birthdays. It was the year that I turned fifty-one and resigned from my job of nineteen years with the Henry Moore Institute. It also represented thirty-four years, to the day, since I took on my first proper job, beyond a paper round, with Sainsbury’s.
Read MoreWhilst I always understood that Jacob’s Ladder would be a labour of love for both myself, as BasementArtsProject: the commissioning organisation, and for sculptor Keith Ackerman, I knew that it would definitely take longer than the one-hundred days of the Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019. But we never imagined the three year odyssey that it would become thanks to the C***d pandemic lockdowns.
Read MoreBeneath the surface of the locked down world the oxygen is running low. The tiny life support capsules sustaining our presence in the airless vacuum of millions of hard-drives, can only sustain three dimensional life for so long. It is time to head for the surface, but not too rapidly.
Read MoreSo how do we get past the problem of perception, access and desire. Life is about dialogue, that is how we learn. We educate ourselves through experience, we find the edge of our zone of comfort and understanding and we push past it, through to what lies beyond.
Read MoreThe question is how to achieve those elusive steps to improvement, how to train your vision on a new horizon and attempt to take people with you on that journey.
Read MoreThis series of drawings were made during coronavirus lockdown and are based on Henry Moore’s Three Standing Figures, which are based in my immediate locality and stand overlooking the quietness of the lake in Battersea Park.
Read MoreSometimes, without the need of confection for a plot, themes can emerge through the process of discussion and planning. I like to think that this is arts natural state, the continual process of discovery, research, reaction, change and consolidation, an alternative to the staid and retrogressive times in which we are currently living.
Read MoreThroughout my second year, I’d been undertaking a series of works that related to home and my family, and for part of the module I was required to research an art space that related to my work, and visualise my pieces within in it.
Read MoreSince we began this venture nearly a decade ago, we have been diligently chipping away underground, creating a place that serves both artists and community alike. Over time the project has become the foundation for a broad set of ideas that address many issues in art whilst speaking directly to the concerns of the local community.
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